ISLAMABAD: Former Prime Minister, senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader and the joint candidate of the 10-party opposition alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) for the Senate chairperson Yusuf Raza Gillani has said that while democracy remains the best revenge, purchasing it is the second-best.
Talking to The Dependent in an exclusive interview after being confirmed as the PDM candidate, Gilani said his triumph in the Senate poll from Islamabad was a reminder of the vengeance potency that democracy has.
“Democracy is not only the best revenge, it is also a multilayered revenge because so many different kinds of democracies pose different kinds of revenge potential. For instance, purchased democracy is the second-best,” he said.
“Of course, uncompromised, unsold democracy remains the best, but we’ve had so few examples of that in our country over the past seven decades. So we have to rejoice at, and take solace in, the second-best revenge,” he added.
The former premier also underlined the beauty of the revenge taken through democracy, in how it allows the avenger and those the vengeance is inflicted upon to later come together and then take revenge together.
“This is the theory of dialectic matlabiasm: that political events result from the conflict of selfish forces and are interpretable as a series of contradictions and their solutions. The conflict is seen as caused by matlabi needs,” narrated Gilani.
“And in Pakistan, we sometimes call these matlabi needs democracy, which in turn means that the avenger and the avengee can unite and separate based on matlabistic realism.”
